100 Days of Good Karma: Day 80 (Diagnosis Story: Part 2 – Save A Life, Grope Your Wife)

It’s sometime in June of 2014. Justin and I in that brief window of parent time where the kids are asleep and neither of us has collapsed from exhaustion yet.

So we do what husbands and wives do.

I’m going to borrow a phrase from a friend and call it ‘paying taxes’.

After ‘taxes’, Justin asked me about the lump. I could tell he didn’t want to bring it up.

He asked about it in the tone of voice I imagine horse trainers using when they think an animal is going to bolt.

“I don’t want to scare you, but I don’t remember that,” he said.

“Oh that!” I said, laughing. “I had a mammogram done years ago. It’s just dense breast tissue.” I explained what that first doctor told me.

He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember that being there before.” He gave me a leering grin. “And I’ve been playing with them for a long time.”

(And he has. For nearly sixteen years.)

So I got to thinking about the lump.

It had been there for years. I already knew that. But it must have changed for Justin to notice it now when he hadn’t before.

Once I stopped to consider it, I’d also been having needle like pains shooting down to my nipple. And that breast ached more frequently than the other one.

But those aches and pains were there and gone so quickly it was hard to tell what was normal monthly breast achiness and what was a symptom to be concerned about. I only saw them as strange in retrospect.

Looking back, that’s one of the scariest parts of knowing I was living with undiagnosed cancer.

Every symptom I had was mild and quickly gone. Not once did I experience a crippling pain that would have sent up a red flag in my mind.

So I went ahead with Justin’s recommendation and made an appointment with my OB/GYN to have the lump checked out.

And that’s the story of how the lump was found the second time and also the reason our team name during the Susan G. Komen walk is “Save A Life, Grope Your Wife”.

Every day’s silver lining for the rest of my life: Justin may have literally saved my life by groping me six months ago.

A parting note to all the ladies out there: Self breast exams don’t always have to be done by you. Have some fun with it. *wink*

Love it! Praise God he mentioned it and pushed you to have it checked. My husband had a similar experience to what you shared in your last post (no, no breast exam), but he had sharp shooting chest pains for years and finally went to have them checked out and was told he was young and totally healthy. Come to find out, he was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer not even 2 years later at the age of 31. And those sharp shooting chest pains were most likely the metastases to the lungs that ended up killing him. Too young my a**. But, I totally love your story, because it is one of hope and survival! Thank you for sharing and for doing so with humor and humility.

I’m so sorry to hear about your husband, Alysha. ‘Frustrating’ is too small of a word to encapsulate how it feels to be dismissed because you’re ‘too young’ to have a disease. I will be forever grateful to my husband for being brave enough to bring it up. He’s my hero.